President Obama will host a Webcast at the White House at 11 a.m. PT (2 p.m. ET) today to answer questions submitted via Twitter. We're covering it live.

The White House and Twitter are billing the event as a "town hall," but it's not exactly going to be an exercise in open-microphone democracy. Instead, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey will select a handful of questions submitted through the #AskObama hashtag.

Among the #AskObama questions: immigration, taxes, gigabit Internet speeds, and whether it's possible to win re-election if the unemployment rate is 9 percent or higher next fall. Some aren't as serious: "It's summertime, Mr. President, and many Americans are on vacation. Should they turn off their smartphones, some of the time?" And: "You say you created millions of new jobs with the stimulus. Why did you put half of them in Texas?"

Obama's first event of this sort, which took place mere weeks after his inauguration, used a democratic-style voting mechanism soon flooded by marijuana legalization advocates, who propelled their questions to the top of the "green jobs," "financial stability," "jobs," and "budget" categories. During a YouTube Q&A earlier this year, 198 of the highest-rated 200 questions dealt with drug policy.

Twitter says it's picked curators--largely professional journalists--from around the country to select #AskObama questions. Then they'll send the questions to Dorsey.

As with Facebook's press event this morning, we'll be using Cover it Live to bring you updates and photos from the event. You can bookmark this page and come back to it or sign up to get an e-mail reminder just ahead of the live blog's launch a little before 11 a.m. PT.

Note: If you plan to watch the live blog from an iOS device or any other mobile browser, make sure you have JavaScript enabled. On iOS you can find that toggle in Settings > Safari. On Android, the setting can be toggled within the native browser's settings menu.

About the author

Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. You can e-mail him or follow him on Twitter as declanm. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.
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